Self-Talk can impact your mental, physical health
Both negative and positive self-talk can impact your mental and physical health.
Posted — UpdatedMany say I fulfilled my potential much later in life than expected. It took years for me to find my stride and to learn how to become who I wanted to be.
What changed? After years of struggling, I decided to change the way I thought and talked to myself. This changed my life.
The secret weapon to changing my thinking was positive affirmations. I wrote them down and said them out loud so I could hear them. I put encouraging words on index cards and covered my mirror, nightstand, and refrigerator with them. I would come back to these words daily, something even hourly.
It was vital that I preach these words out loud to myself. You can repeat them to yourself mentally, but it will not have the same powerful effect or benefit as repeating them out loud.
These positive affirmations redirected my thoughts and helped to redirect my life.
What is self-talk?
What I didn’t realize then was that I was teaching myself to have better-self talk.
Self-talk is your inner voice — it’s how you talk to yourself.
While self-talk can define much of who we are, self-talk patterns don’t have to be set in stone. Negative self-talk can be transformed into positive and have radical impacts on our life.
When I see my students tell themselves positive affirmations, they build up their resiliency, change their mindsets, and persist in achieving their goals.
Positive words can also influence behavior, helping people to shape new habits and patterns.
Our patterns of self-talk are all too often negative.
It can feel like our brains are hardwired to remember negative experiences over positive ones. Unfortunately, I often vacillate towards negative self-talk because of a history of life challenges.
Stop and think, which are you, negative or positive? You know the conversation, the dialogue that persists hourly in your head. Does it sound something like “I’m not good enough” or “There are just too many challenges”?
Questions to Evaluate Your Self-Talk
- Is this dialogue negative or positive?
- What am I telling myself about my concerns?
- What is causing my anxiety and apprehensions?
- How is my self-talk impacting the view of myself?
So often, we tell ourselves that we are always failures or that we can never do anything right.
Yet, these statements simply aren’t true.
I became a life coach to inspire others to excel. I want you to see that you are not defined by your situation or your mistakes. You can thrive, and you can grow.
It starts with what you tell yourself. You believe in your own voice more than any other.
Five tips to talk to yourself better
- Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a dear friend.
- Sift through what your thoughts are and what people say about you.
- Remember, our brains like to focus on the negative.
- Instead of dwelling on something that bothers you — talk about it.
- Take on a growth mindset. You aren’t defined by failures; rather, consider them a part of your learning process.
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